Happiness and Joy

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

All the windows of my heart I open to the day.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment—was the carver happy while he was about it?

Pain is short, and joy is eternal.

 

Resistance is the secret of joy!

The joy of life is to put out one’s power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

Did ye not hear it?—No! ’twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o’er the stony street. On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

to have to combat one’s instincts—that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure, nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Love is the most fun you can have without laughing.

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.